The Sun. — London, England, 1864-11-07 00:00:00

The Capture of the Confederate Steamer Florida. SOUTHAMPTON, Saturday. Captain C. M. Morris and Paymaster R. Taylor, of the Confederates States Navy, late of the Florida steamer, arrived here this evening in the Royal mail steamship Magdalena, from Bahia. An inter view since held with Mr. Taylor at Keiway's Hotel, supplemented by information received from Bahia, enables me to furnish you with the following par. ticnlars connected with the capture of the Florida by the Federal steamer of war Wachnsetts, of which a telegraphic announcement has been received via Lisbon : It appears that the Florida arrived at Bahia at 9 p.m. on Oct. 4, having put in at that port for a sup ply of stores and coals, and to effect some slight re pairs in her machinery, Soon after she had anchored in the outer harbour a boat went alongside and de manded the name of the vessel. The answer was given, " The Confederate States steamer Florida," and a person in the boat called out, "This boat is from her Britannic Majesty's steamer Curlew." The next morning it was found that neither the Curlew nor ary other British steamer of war was at the pert, and the officers of the Florida came to the opi - aion that the boat must have been sent from the Federal steamer Wachusetts, which was lying in the harbour. On the morning of the sth the Florida was visited by a Brazilian naval officer, to whom Capt. Morris stated his requirements, and the officer told the captain that he would carry his message to the Governor of the Province, but until an answer was received from that official the Florida must not com municate with the shore. At 12 o'clock at noon a letter from the Governor was received by Captain Morris informing him that he was then ready to receive him. The captain immediately went on shore and had an interview with the ntw.rnnr, 'rate, informed him that he would be allowed 48 hours to get in stores and coals, and that should the repairs require a longer time, he would grant an extension for that purpose. The Governor was very urgent in his request that Captain Morris would strictly ob serve the laws of neutrality during his stay, and informed the captain that the American Consul, Mr. Wilson, hate given him his word of honour that the Wachusetts would not violate the laws of neutrality within the Brazilian waters. Capt. Mor ris gave the Governor the same assurance on the part of the Florida. An admiral of the Brazilian navy was present during this interview, and when Captain Morris requested that he should be allowed to move the Florida from the outer to the inner roeds, so as to be out of danger and to facilitate co ding operations as well, the admiral said, " Oh, yes, move her in and come inside of me, and you will be out of all danger." Immediately after the interview the Florida was removed to the berth des signited for her, having two Brazilian vessels of war between her and the Wachusetts, and close under the guns of a steamer of war and a Brazilian fort. The Brazilian engineer who examined the broken machinery of the Florida reported that it cou'd not ba repaired in less than four days, and Captain Morris at once came to the determination to let part of his crew go ashore for liberty for twelve hours. A number of the men accordingly went ashore in the evening. Just after dark, about 7 o'clock, a boat went alongside the Florida, and on being hailed the reply was that she was from the Wachusetts, with the United States Consul on board, who had an offiaial communication from the captain of that ship to the captain of the Florida. The Consul sent up his card with the letter, which was addressed " Captain Morris, sloop Florida." The letter was sent back to the Consul, who was told that it could tot be received, es it was not properly addressed but that any communication addressed to Captain Morris, of the Confederate States navy, would be received. The boat then left. Oa the morning of the 6th a Mr De Vidiky went on board the Florida, having received a letter from the United States' Consul enclosing one to Captain Morris. Mr D 3 Vidiky read to the captain his letter from the Consul, requesting him to deliver the enclosed challenge to Capt, Morris, and offering to use his influence with the Brazilian Government to have the Florida fitted out quickly if he would an cept the challenge to go out and fight the Wachusetts. The latter to Capt. Morris was improperly directed as befog o ; and that gentleman declined to receive it, but told Mr De Vidiky to say that he had come to Bahia for a special purpose, which being accom plished, he should leave again —that he should neither seek nor avoid a contest with the Wachua settF, bat should he meet her he would try to de ctroy hcr. Having received this answer Mr. Be Jeri.. The same afternoon, the first batch of wie•Tv men WAY 1116 •.cuaz.Laa.ca ry aA4r, 44,111..L.7, Lll6 starboard watch was released, and Captain Morris, end some of the officers also, went ashore at the same time. One of the six men who subsequently swam ashore stated that about 3 15 a.m. on the 7tb, Act ing master T. T. Hunter, jun., being in charge of the deck, the Wachusetts left her anchorage, and taking advantage of the darkness, steered for the Florida, from whom she could not be seen until she was close to her. She was hailed by Acting -master Hunter, s ho received no answer, and ho conse quently called hands to quarters. Before the officers nod crew could all get on deck the Wachusetts struck the Florida on the starboard quarter, cutting her rail down to the deck and carrying away her mizsnmaet. At the same time the Wachusetts poured a volley of musketry and a charge of canister from her forecastle pivot gun upon the Florida's decks. The Wachusetts then backed off, and demanded a surrender, to which Lieutenant Porter declined to secede. The Wachusetts fired again and again, which was returned by the officers and crew of the Florida.. Another demand was made to surrender, and Lieutenant Porter answered "I will surrender conditionally." The;Wachusetts then ceased firing, and the commander called out for Captain Morris to come on board her. Lieutenant Porter answered that he was on shore, but that he, as commanding officer, would come as soon as he could get a boat ready. A number of armed boats were then sent from the Wachusetts to take possession of the Florida. As soon as Lien tenant Porter was heard to say that he would sur render, 15 of the Florida's crew jumped overboard to escape capture, of whom only six succeeded in reaching the shore, the other nine it is alleged being shot in the water by men on the forecastle and in the boats of the Wachusetts. Mr Hunter was wounded, and a number of men killed. The Wachusetts then made fast a hawser to the foremast of the Florida, and after slipping her cable towed her out to sea. While this was being done a beat from the Bre ailian flagship went alongside the Wachusetts and ordered her to return to her anchoring ground, and a reply was given telling the boat to keep off, as she was about to go back to her anchorage. Capt. Morris was sleeping ashore, at an hotel overlooking the water, and when called up by persons at the hotel, who suspected that something wrong was going on by hearing the report of guns, he got down just in time to make out what in the darkness appeared to bo the rtSISCIS steaming out of the harbour. On the 12th ult. the Wachusetts, with the Florida in tow, passed within sight of Pernambuco. Mr Da Veliky wrote a letter to Captain Morris on the 7th, expressing his regret at having accepted the mission from the American Consul, whom he could not find on his return from the Florida to hand him back the lettere, and stating that after what hedaranspired he believed the challenge had not been made in good faith. The Florida had only 25 tons of coaldast on board at the time of her capture. The machinery to be repaired—T`L, the pipe of her dcnkeyeengine and freeheweter condenser—is still on shore at the Br , zlian ersenal at Bahia. When the Florida arrived at Bahia she had a crew of 17 officers and 129 men, of whom 5 officers and 71 men (incluling the 6 who swam ashore at the time her capture) were on shore, and consequently pre. served their liberty. The other 12 officers and 58 men were either captured. killed, cr wounded. The names of these 12 officers are—First Lieutenant Thomas K. Porter, Second Lieutenant S. G. Stone, First Assistant Surgeon S. I. Charlton, Chief En gineer W. S. Thompson, Acting Masters It. S. Floyd, G. D. Bryan, and T. T. Hunter, jun., As &atant-Surgeon Thomas Emory, Midshipman G. T. ,sinclair, jun., First Asnstant-Engineer W. Ahern, second do. J. B. Brown, and Captain's Clerk W. D. Hough. The five officers who are free are Captain C. M. Morris, Paymaster R. Taylor, Third Lieutenant S. Barron, jun., Midshipman J. H. Dyke, and Mas ter's Mate J. B. King. Of these the first two have arrived in the Magdalena, and the others, with the 71 of the crew, are coming home passengers is a sailing ship, to leave Bahia for London abouthe 15th of October. The American Consul, Mr. Wilson, went away in the Wachusette, leaving no one in charge of his consulate at Bahia. All business with the States was consequently interrupted. The indignation of the Brazilians at the conduct pursued towards the Florida was very intense, and the populace tore down the American Consulate arms and broke it in pieces in the street. Nearly all the merchants at Bahia had signed a document, and forwarded it to the Chamber of Commerce at New York, requesting them to withhold any judgment on the matter until they have full and correct accounts of the outrage. Captain Morris proceeds to London by to-night's mail train, and Mr Taylor follows in the morning. Those gentlemen wish it to be stated that the reports in some Brazilian papers of the deaths of certain officers of the Florida are untrue, and calculated to give unnecessary alarm to their friends and rela tives. SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS. Death of a Great National Favourite. The following epigram —the two last lines of which are admirable—we are indebted for to a correspondent of our able contemporary the Examiner, an epigrammatist signing himself " D." 29TH OCTOBER, 1864. Death may laugh now athwart the glooms of Earth, And make his aspect horrible with smiles xor iit, .ac nruutE a blow that murders mirth, And silences the laughter of the isles. THE SATURDAY RETIE - W.—lt would be only pedantry to compare the late and lamented John Leech either with his contemporaries or his pre decessors as a caricaturist. A caricaturist he was not ; and if he is to be reduced to a single type, Hogarth is the only artist—and Hogarth only par tially—to whom he can be at all likened. Chrono logically, of course, Leech stood in legitimate suc cession as the representative humonrist artist of the day, in that series which comprises the names of Bunbury, Gilray, Rowlandson, H. 8., and George Cruikshank. Bat the range of each and of all these artists was cot filed, and their aim compara. tively narrow. Bunbury attached himself to fashion able life, but he was a mere caricaturist, or distor- tionist. Gilray, with wonderful fertility of invention, chiefly occupied himself with politics. He was a par tisan, and a coarse one. Occasionally he almost hit the sublime, as in the Worship of the Sans Culotte Deity; but he must have been a man of fiery tem• perament and strong passions. Rowlandson, who was a real artist when he chose, must have been a man of nasty ideas—so coarse, so swinish, so bestial are his subjects. And if he satirised the worst animal passions, it was not without a sneaking sympathy with them. H. B. confined himself, we believe, to political portraits, which were not deficient in dia. ratter; bat they were cold, and the wit usually re quired a scholiast. Cruikshank, though a genius of the first rank, and of wonderful fertility in invention and unrivalled in subjects of diablerie and grim fancy, is absolutely without a sense of beauty. It has been reserved for Leech to pour out in unabated _ _ succession for more than 20. years, week after week, works of real art,which are certainly not caricatures, but rather humouristic pictures, illustrating the ac tual life of the times, its political and social facts, with a precision and versatility and originality— and, above all, with a real moral goodness—which presents a new chapter in the history of the pencil. Hogarth'e aim, it must be admitted, was much the same; and he had the unapproachable Merit of ori ginating a new function for art. He brought art home to living men by showing it concerned with living life—with the vices, follies, and facts of the times as they were. The "Enraged Musician" might have been one of Leech's own subjects; " Beer Lane!' and " Gin Alley" might appear in next week's Punch ; and if Hogarth's chef fame depends upon his two great pictorial epics, it is only by reason of a change in taste that Leech was precluded from scourging the Fast Life of our own days with the vigour of the immortal painter of the Georgian Rakes and Harlots. Hu garth attacked sin rather than folly ; while Leech confined himself to the pettinesses alai weak nesses of mankind. At any rate it is something to be proud of that neither our Hogarth nor our Leech prostituted their gifts by the sort of apotheo sis of the demimonde and Lorettism which forms the main attraction of the Charivari. Leech, how- ever had advantages which were denied to Hogarth The brush or the etching-needle were Hogarth'e only tools; woodcutting is to a prolific draughqman what the railway is to the traveller, Leech's works divide themselves naturary into two great groups —the political BEd the social " as he 1 1 1 ,M1 1 11 Efaltlirraiiriaz,e i ia . encii Were impossible in Hogarth'e days. There was not a congregation for the pictorial preacher to address. Nor are we aware that the thing itself was in Hogarth's way. Besides which, the weekly epigram on Punch's full page only epitomises the limes' articles of the week. It compresses, as with an hydraulic power, the float. ing sentiment of the day —presents it with admir able point, and in the neatest and most memorable shape. But Leech, as a politician, is hardly ever original, He only claims to reflect and to represent the general public judgment on men and things. Hence there is a certain timidity in his obsequious following suit to the popular voice. At the time of the Papal aggression he was a strong anti. Catholic ; but as the popular fanaticism began to cool, he ven tured on one of his most memorable hits—Lord John chalking up No Popery and then running away. If all the world had not agreed that the same Lord John's official powers %ere limited, we should nut have had the Page who was " not strong enough for the place." Had not a gust of gossip surmised that Lord Brougham was, some 20 years ago, intriguing for place, we should not have had to laugh at that most comic of sketches,the ex• Chancellor as the'Merry man in the Circus, ready "for to come, for to go, for to fetch, for to carry." But to say this is no disparage ment to Leech. He secures impersonality by the palpable abeyance of his own private views. Gilray dashed and daubed under the inspiration of strong personal feelings, in his fierce attacks on the French Revolution. But Leech gains in force and impres siveness by merging the man in the chronicler. His commentaries on public things are party commend taries, but they do not affect to be his own. They are the current interpretation of regular politicians ; they only claim to represent with point and defi. niteness the judgment, on public men and public events, of a least half the nation. And this has its value—the value, that is, of all contemporary judg. meats, with their incompleteness, their rapidity, their one-sidedness, their inexactness. To the Ma caulay that is to be, a volume of Punch's political pencillings will stand him in good stead for a file of the Times. But in one thing Leech must be credited with personal merits of no slight character in his political sketches. Personal in one sense he must be, in the other he is not. It is always open to the political satirist to treat his sub ject in the spirit of the early John Bull and the manner of Theodore Rook. This is what Leech never did. Private character was to him a sacred territory. He never listened at key. holes, or subsidised butlers and lady's-maids for the barb of his epigrams. And if it should be said that the taste of our own days would not bear the revival of the Age and Satirist, it may be owing to such as Leech that the Age and Satirist are now-a days impossible. After all, however, it was not by his political satire that Leech made himself a per sonal friend and intimate of all English circles. He was one of ourselves. He entered into our Common donaStiC life, with all its little funny affectations, its grotesqueness, its foibles, its weak• nese, and its strength. Leech shot folly as it flies; bat he was never bitter, seldom cyn:cal. He was not a mere Thackerav, with a theory of life that we all have a dark cupboard, that there is a spectre always hovering over the hearth, and some vice or crime that we dare hardly to confess to ourselves. Leech had all the human sympathies; a sense of the beauties of nature, both in men and the external world; a certain confidence in his kind, and a large sympathy with the great humanities. It was not, as in Thackerayte case, that the satirist took a solitary foible or a petti , ness and expanded it into the representation of a class. Leech really did assume the class and then limn the individual. He was rather the Theophrasa tale than the Tit:non of Art. Ho could not, even had he been capable of writing, have invented u Becky Sharp ; but it is no disparagement to Thackerav to say that he could not have imagined Leech's Mr. Briggs, or his ideal " servant-gal," or his superb flunkeys, or his schoolboys, so fearful and wonderful in their immature insolence, and in a wisdom of impertinence which nearly reaches the sublime. Ne t m ust i t be forgotten how wide was the range of L eec h' s keen observation. In the hunting-field, at th e waterieg.place, on the river bank, in the drawing-room, in London streets, on the solitary moor, at home or abroad, far out at sea, in the next garret, sumptuous or squalid, high or low—it mattered not what was his b' t ett je?, , he was always at home. And, somehow or other, one never thought worse of one's kind even in their absurdities and vanities and oddities after they had been quizzed by Leech. He always contrived to leave some subtle trace of sympathy with the objects of his pencil. He wielded only summer lightning, which played genially round its subject, but seldom scorched it. His victims, if they may be called victims, never became disagreeable or offensive. Once, and once only, if we remember right, he put forth his full strength when he drew a hideous and almost awful group of French prostitutes—the foreigners whom we could spare ; but somehow there seemed to be hardly enough of sincerity in the public mind to be grateful for, or to appreciate, this sterner stuff. It was not understood, and Leech never ventured again out of the region of the playful and sportive. It was in him to have been a Crabbe or Swift ; public taste compelled him to be elegant rather than austere. No joubt he was, in some class portraits, monotone off". His girls, fresh, honest, pretty, and unitellec tual, are true to fact; but as a class—which perhaps makes them more true to fact—they are slightly tire some. Yet there was always heart in them ; their ankles might be impossible, but they represented the right stuff out of which wives and mothers are to be made. In all this we have been, however slightly and superficially, only touching .on the moral characteristics of Leech as an illustrator of extant English life. But it must not be forgotten that ho was really a very great artist. It may be that his artistic versatility is to be traced to the circumstance that he was not regularly trained to art as Hogarth was. It may sound something like treason to the received canons if we say that Ho• garth's professional training, slight as it was, cramped his genius. Leech, at any rate, by trying all branches of art, found the vast range of his powers. We are not aware that Hogarth ever went beyond character-drawing and expression by the human figure. Of landscape he seems to have known little. Bat Leech was equally at home when he had to hint the subtle senae, the mixed motive, the suppressed emotion, the unspoken wit ticism in his Peels or his Cobens, his O'Connells or his Disraelis, or when he had to convey the vast ness of immeasurable stretches of ocean, or the cape ie ut a woos, or rile leugtlieulus Olotwu.. yr miles after miles of flat inland scenery by a few but masterly lines of the mere lead pencil. Nor was his art at all the less accurate because he occasion ally reached even to something of Turner's sense of space. His horses are as well defined, and bear witness to as careful study, and as well satisfy the skilful in horse flesh and horse points, as those of Aiken; and in accuracy of drawing not inferior to the more legitimate disciples of the historical schools. The only wonder is bow any man, com pelled or induced to be so prolific, could find time for his largeness and versatility of study ; and it could only have been by the hardest work that he so seldom repeated himself, and was for so many years a genial student of life, and its conceits and follies, its strength and weakness. But his soul and strength were in his work, and it has been given to few with the same loving heart to feel, and with easy hand to transcribe, the powers of scenery, the mountain and flood, the deep equelchy ploughed fields, the blackness of night, the curl of the break ing sea, or the dulness of the moor. Of course, he paid the penalty for all this herd work. Nobody can work week after week,and year after year,with out intermission, and not suffer loss of the sub• stance of life. Leech, it seems, was—or he could never have done what he did—susceptible, delicately organised, impatient of the little worries of life. He fell an early victim to over work. Hie powers never failed ; they seldom do in the case of a lover of work, end a conscientious high-minded character. His inven tion did not wax feeble, nor did his facility dege nerate into mannerism and vapid iteration. But he sacrificed life for the means of life, or at least for the work of life. If he had taken a six months' holiday, he might have lived to a riper age; and though it may be an exaggeration to say that he was killed by the detestable organ-grinders, it is not too much to say that he was worked to death, and that, to u man in his excitable and probably morbid state, organ-grinding, or any other petty misery of human life dwelt upon and acutely realised, accelerated the crisis which only rest could have averted. THE ATHENEUM.—" Speak no evil of the dead,'' would be superfluous caution to the biographer of John Leech. It would be hard indeed to fled any thing evil to say of a man so generous, genial, affectionate, and tender-hearted—one so full of self sacrifice that his existence presents the ideal of a gentleman Int into practice,—one who, with all the temptations of a eubtle wit and relish for the ridi culous in human conduct, seems never to have hesi tated between his friend and his joke, but in a sense contrary to the first application of this famous phrase. Of a man in Leech's position a is impos sible to tell a more honourable thing than that we have looked at hundreds, one might say thousands, of his sketches of character and satiric delineations, yet never found him on the side of passion, party prejudice or pique, never the servant of a cliquish whim, never spiteful, never meretricious, and justifying his least purposeful humour by truth of characterisation that is devoid of ill will. To this testimony of a negative sort to be found in his works, there must be added one which is positive, i.e., that ho was often the active advocate of good things, and usually on the thoughtful and kind appropriate way, a really great power toiAueuce opinion—one of his cartoons often so aptly and stre nuously expressed a tone of public feeling that hos!s of men, whose minds had not echoed it ere Leech took up the theme, gave their consent to the thought he treated so truthfully. Looking at many hundreds of this true artist's works, no oce thing strikes us with so much force as the fact, that he was so un ceasingly lolled on the side of Right, as English. men receive it. Oae of the earliest sketches in Punch, contributed by Leech, will illustrate this point and his genial way of defiling with a theme. It was styled " Foreign Affairs," and published in August, 1841, showing a considerable number of heads and faces of French and German scamps, such as take refuge in London—these were drawn with considerable; skill, and their knavish or grimy characteristics stringently delineated ; lest this ap plication of the lash, however, should seem British prejudice, the reader was warned by a footnote that these affairs must not be considered as representa tives of foreign gentlemen. In 1841 the caution was more needed than it would be now. To show that there was often a deeper thought than that which purposed to hit the flying folly of the hoar, we need only ask the reader to turn to such cartoons as "A Case of Real Distress," in the recently republished "Early Pencilling.," and compare the theme of the design with the figure of the wretched boy, who, in need of food, housing,teaching, and raiment, stands vulgarly grinning in the corner of the com position ; turn also to " The Home of the Rick-Burner," for something out of the run of shallow thought, to " The Rivals—Prize Peasant and Prize Pig," and to "The Educational Ques tion," the young rustic who, between the stools of state and voluntary education, comes to the ground. Of the purely witty class, among a thousand more, let us recall to the reader's mind, selecting from one volume of Leech's works, and a few from a multi tude, the well-known ' Peace,' Louis Philippe look ing askant into the chamber of a gun. ' A groat Demonstration,' My Lord Assassin Clarendon mur dering the Irish,' Shall I hold your Horse, Sir ?' concerning the ridiculous Wellington horse-statue which is still a disgrace to the western entrance to London; The Last Appeal,' Sir R. Inglis and a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasioe ; and The Protection Dodge.' We have but recently spoken of the artistic merit of Leech's works, that by which he held a position among the first artists of the age, and which would, as one of the witnesses before the recent Royal Academy Commission averred,. in any other country than ours, have secured hon ours for him. We need not repeat this opinion. One of the most extraordinary things connected with the life of Leech is the number of his works, attesting, as it does, the energy, fertility,and diver sity of his mind, and the extent of his observation of character and nature. He did not deal more happily with men and women than with landscape ; some of his backgrounds are true pictures in the best sense of the word, wealthy in incident, light and shade, and "colour," as artists style the almost indescribable manner, of which Leech was a master, of representing that quality of nature by black and white : he owed this power to hie large as well as intricate knowledge of effsct and detail. It was almost Equally Leech's merit that ho dealt happily with morning, noon, evening, moonlight or dullness without, or artificial light within, in his drawieffe. Every observer can recall examples of this singular faculty, end none can say he repeated himself therein. Of the vast number of his works —the quality of which, be it noted, did not dote riorate, but continued to improve as he grew older and worked harder--let it suffice to say, that the ' Pictures of Life and Character' alone, being but selections from the artist's contributions to Punch, and by no means the whole of his multi ferious drawings in that publication, amount to cot fewer than two thousand five hundred in all. To these are to be added countless designs, such as the illustrations to ' Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, and other not very worthy works of that class, the Comic History of England,' the Ingoldshy Legends,' and minor books, which would, if collected, form a small library. How arduous must have been the labours of a man so fertile of intellect as this multitude of produc tions shows Leech to have been, may ba surmised now, however lightly it might have impressed those who de lighted in the results, and had small thought that such toil was wearing down a brain thus prolific, and urging into an early grave a man so much beloved. Thus it was, however —ceaseless labour had been telling upon the artist for years past; his whole nervous system fell into a state of ex treme irritability, threatening complete loss of power and physical exhaustion, unless thorough rest could set it steady again. Debility of this sort had so great an effect upon Leech, that at times the slightest noise caused him great suffering, and he fled in vain from that annoyance which others bear with bitter resignation or transieni anger. His sufferings may provoke sympathy for other over-wrought intellects. So vast an amount of intellectual labour as that referred to would seem enough for the life of a man long past the prime of his days. Few out of Leech's im mediate circle knew, however, that this was supplemented, as it were, to an education in the medical profession, to hospital studies and apprenticeship to a surgeon, with prac tice such as students seek and have, and that, ere Leech called himself an artist, he was qualified to be a doctor. Such was the case. Leech added authorship to his many accomplishments, and the pages of Punch, retain occasional papers by the artist who did so much for its success. His personal habits may be described here. He was an ardent fisher and rider, fond of studying as well as sharing in athletic sports, and, although not gifted with a remark• ably strong physique, sustained, by his energetic and nervous temperament, a great deal of fatigue. As to Leech's method, or rather habit of practising his art, we may say that all his friends knew the never-failing little note-book, which contained wealth of sketches of ex pression, bits of composition, effect, and humour, such as the artist met in his wa!ks and visits. Did an odd or char- acteristic face pass him by, out would come the little book as soon as he was unobserved, and its page 3 re corded the impression of the observer with extraordinary facility and felicity, These notes often suggested themes, _ _ or were used as occasion required and the fertile memory of the artist brought them forth. A few lines will record Leech's earthly career. He was of Irish descent, born, in the city of London, in 1817. At an unusually early age he went to the Chartcrhouse School, where he remained eight years, under Dr Russell, and during the stay of Thackeray in that place. Several of his schoolfellows are now, or have been, distinguished in many ways. Even in childhood Leech practised drawing; he was an able sketcher while at school ; all the teaching he got in art was of the common sort wasted upon boys at school in those days. Beyond some temporary counsel, from Mr Millais, with regard to the ,r.ofjpoof D ni..1.;., Cliult LA v.. la.vaa lb TT vvsafuvua plates to produce the well-known gallery of painted designs from _Punch, which appeared st the Egyptian-hall quite recently,—Leech received no instruction of the sort during the whole of his life. Yielding, it is believed, to the wishes of others, Leech, on quitting the Charterhouse, commenced to study medicine and surgery under Mr Stanley, and entered St, Bartholomew's Hospital as a student : he re mained there until his own inclination for Art found en- couragement by the advice of some judicious friends, and he essayed to draw on wood for publication. Punch seemed created as a field for the display of his ability. From this period our subject has been before the world : what his labours were we have said. It is satisfac. tory, in a melancholy way, to know that a time for rest was near at hand for Leech, and that we might still have had him amongst us, kindly, and as much a true gentleman as ever, had the attack which bereft us not proved fatal. Ar rangements had been made by which he would have had many months of entire repose and obtained new health, it was hoped. The provision was too late; for some time past the artist's health was in a depressed and exceedingly feverish state; he was receiving medical advice and known to be seriously affected, but not, it was thought, in any dangerous way, although the anxiety of his friends made them watch him heedfully. His greatest misery was lack of sleep : for three nights together it was no uncommcn thing for the artist who pleased so many of us to get not a moment's rest. He had been to consult Dr Quain on Fri day: there seemed no unusually alarming symptoms to be dreaded in his case. Oa Saturday he was worse, but not markedly so ; some few children, friends of his children, were gathered at his house, so little expected was the event we deplore ; the evening found him still worse, and a succession of nervous fits ended in death. He was buried at,,Kensal Green on Friday. Two children sur vive him. The best portrait of Leech is that exhibited by Mr Millais at the Royal Academy in 1835, No. 1,088. It was executed in water colours, and is in the possession of the family of the deceased. A small statuette was shown in Trafalgar-equare at the last Exhibition. Leech' s last im portant effort for the recovery of his health was a visit to Baden-Baden and Homburg : this was connected with a series of sketches of life at the gaming tables that were to form an important addition to the published works of the artist, TIIE LONDON REVIEW.—Wit, which is in itself the brightest and most nimble emanation of life, seems to have some strange affinity with death. Whether it be that the wit and humorist can only be such by virtue of some ex quisite delicacy of organization which is seldom able to withstand for long the rough usage of the world,—or whether the perpetual creativeness of genius exhausts the animal energies in the process, drawing, as it were, through the fine electric agency of the nerves, all the spirit and sap of a man's life, and expending it inbeautiful and airy forms —certain it is that men of conspicuous ability in the gay and joyous world of fancy are generally short-lived. Shak spere dying at 52 is a type of the fate that seems reserved for all who, whether in literature or in what is technically called art, have any share in the mental powei which created Fal staff. Of Shakspere's dramatic contemporaries, not many lived to be elderly. Philosophers last out their eight or nine decades, and are vigorous almost to the end; statesmen and lawyers are conspicuous in the records of longevity ; epic poets and high art painters not unfreq'iently hold on until 70 or 80; but the humorist is most fragile, and dies young. 1 homes Hood and Mackworth\'raed are instances in point, and of those who founded Puncht hree-rtniftwtew Albert Smith at not much later, Jerrold at 51, Thackoray at 52. And now we have to mourn the loss of one who has done more perhaps than any of those brilliant writers to create and sustain the unexampled popularity of our weekly satirist. At the early age of 47, John Leech is dead. The announcement of his decease, which was made in some of the morning papera on Monday, came like an astonishment on all who had learnt to regard the sketches of this genial and gifted man as a part of the appointed and unfailing sun shine of their lives. For more than twenty years he had, indeed, been almost as regular in his appearances as the sun itself. Scarcely a week passed during all that period in which his pleasant fancies did not shine out from the pages of Punch, and not seldom from other pages too. We came at length to expect them like some natural largesse of the earth or elements, and, it is to be feared, took them too much as a matter of course, ungratefully forgetting the enormous labour of such productiveness. It is said of some men that we cannot associate with them the idea cf death; and this was pre-eminently so with him who has just departed from our midst. He could draw sad and touching, ay, and even grand things ; yet his sketches, for the most part, were so light and bright and happy-making, so full both of the vigour and zest of English life, that we never thought of their originator in the solemn twilight of mortality. We knew, too, that he was still in the prime of life, and if we calculated chances at all, we hoped to see him work ing for our delight during another quarter of a century. Yet already he is gone. The current number of Punch, published on Wednesday, contains a sketch of his, full of his wonted spirit, humour, observation of life, and easy mastery of touch ; but, on the previous Saturday evening, the hand that drew it dropped cold in death. Some five and-twenty years must have passed since Mr Leech—then a medical student and a friend of Albert Smith, who was also qualifying himself for the same profession—began to make little droll sketches of life and character, which were published in some of the periodicals of the day. Though full of humour and keen appreciation of social oddities, they were somewhat course in execution, partak ing of the extravagant caricaturism of the time, and pro bably few Rho looked at them anticipated that the artist would at no very distant day attain the consummate power which he afterwards displayed. Some of his early etchings on steel, in illustration of stories published in _Bentley's Miscellany about the year 1841, we re ind e ed sufficiently poor—and, though he afterwards i m p rove d g reatly even in this respect, and produced some goo d effects of colour on steel, his real calling was for sketches on wood. He had the good sense to know this, and to keep mainly to that line. There are certain things which are specially adapted to call forth a man's peculiar faculty ; and happy is he who meets with the very em pl oymen t best calculated to develope all that is in hi m. The es t a bli s hment of Punch was a singularly fortun a t e c i rcums tance for Leech. No other publication, except ono of the same kind, could have been so admirably fitted for the particular talent of the man It helped to educate him ; it was partly made by him, and partly made hlm. He joined it in the second month of its existence, and very few numbers have appeared, from that August, 1841, to this present November, 1864. that have not been gladdened and enriched by the creations of his exhaustless brain. In earlier years, he did many of the political caricatures ; but of late he abandoned that species of work, entirely, and confined himself to those sketches of social manner and character in which he has never had an equal, and seems to have left no successor. When it is borne in mind that these drawings were almost entirely pure exer cises of the fancy—based indeed on certain general condi tions in the outer world, but not suggested by actual oc ' currences, and therefore requiring an immense amount of invention to bring them forth in a palpable and " telling" shape—the most inexperienced will bo able to form some idea of the tremendous draught on a man's spirits and energy implied in the production of such pictures, week after week, year after, in sickness and in health, in de spondency as well as in natural mirth, and whether the season ware prolific or sterile in suggestive matter That Mr Leech sometimes " repeated himself" is doubtless perfectly true. He had a manner of his own, as all men of genius have, and he had his pet subjects and his favourite types of face. But within the circle which cir cumscribed him, as it circumscribes the greatest—and his very devotees do not claim for him a position among the chosen few—how rich was the variety, how admirable the skill 1 What artist has yet so felicitously united the rough oddity of caricature with an overmastering perception of truth and a sanctifying sense of beauty ? Leech gave us the humours of the streets, and did not disgust ; he sketched the frivolities of the drawing room, and did not weary. Whether he were reproducing the poor little errand boy, with his gambols, his mischief, and his harmless slang, or the terrible human offleourings of St. ciilee's kennels, or THE brtN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 7, 1864. the gent out for a holiday, or the exquisite at his club or in the parks, or the lady of fashion at dinner or ball, or jauntily a-horseback in bewitching hat and feather, or the Paterfamilias and Materfamilies of middle-class life at home or by the seaside, surrounded by the girls and boys, or the footman of Belgravia, or the " servant gal" of Paddington, or the garotting ruffian, or the foreigner whom he detested, or the whole tribe of huntsmen, sportsmen, and anglers whom he loved—in all he was equally at home, for the quick eye for truth and nature, and the cunning hand to interpret what the eye had seen, were never wanting. What a heaped measure and overplus of life do we find in these amazing sketches What a reflex of our age ! What a miniature England 1 For not only did he give us character and life to excess, but he " threw in," as a sort of careless make-weight, horses and dogs and donkeys, all discrimi nated with the touch of a master in that special walk ; and not content with this, but adding wealth to wealth, be would dash on to the block, as mere backgrounds, and often effected by a few rough strokes, landscapes and sea scapes and sky-scapes, wherein we saw the tangled brakes and hedgerows of our land, the long flat fields, the soft retirement of distant hills, the rivers drowsy with muffling sedge and reedy overgrowth, the heavy heat August noons, the wiry trees of M-trch scratching and quivering in a keen air from the north, or a wild coast in autumn with the wind in visible motion on the frothy billows and the scudding clouds, and in the streaming hair and skirts of ladies on the shore, At this present moment, with the shock of the artist's death fresh upon us, we cannot pretend to enter into anything like an ana lytical criticism on his genius, or to show wherein he failed, or what were the limitations of his powers. We glance in imagination over the long achievements of years, and can only note the wonderful panorama which they unfold. But one point should be specially mentioned— the tender, almost touching, sense which Mr Leech pos sessed of the beauty of women and children. And when ever we look again at those beautiful sketches of fresh young life, we shall recollect with a sad interest that, on the very evening when he breathed his last, a child's party had assembled at his house, and was hastily dismissed by the approach of death. The writer of the admirable obituary notice in the Times hints that the melancholy end of Mr Leech was accelerated by the agony he endured from the organ men whom he so often satirised ; and a iAt fp,. from Mr Mark Lemon is quoted to that effect. Our street musicians have already enough to answer for in dis- turbing the peace of studious men, but this is surely an extreme exaggeration. Mr Leech suffered greatly from all sorts of noises ; but the first causes of his sufferings were the first causes of his death. The truth—the sad truth --is, that he worked his delicate organisation until the whole nervous system gave way. The man was struck down by excessive toil, yet he went on toiling. A form of heart disease supervened, and while his years were still in all their vigour, and not a little in their freshness, he was taken from the place he filled only too well, and which we do not expect to see filled again, THE SPECTATOR.—The death of John Leech is a great loss to the public, but not exactly for the reason which is to-day upon everybody's lip. He was not a great cari caturist, or a caricaturist at . all. He might possibly have become one, though we do not think his genius lay specially in that direction, but he never seriously tried, at least in the many years during which ha delighted the public who now misdescribe him, Satirist he was occasionally, and, if he himself thought out some of the sketches he drew, he could rise to a high level of pictorial pathos, but his true function was that of a social humouriet, a man who used his pencil instead of his pen to make the humorous side of ordinary life clear to the least observant, to reflect the ways and the whims and the follies current in English society. Gifted with a rare sense of the ludicrous element always discern ible in artificial life, and specially visible in the pushing life of the English middle class, and with a still more rare felicity of expression, he generally contrived to make his sketches eomic, but they were never caricatures. The essence of caricature is the exaggeration of some details, some part of an idea on which the draughtsman perceives that the impression of the whole idea rests, in which he de tects, to use the phrase of another art, the point which all other men have missed. Leech, if he exaggerated at all, which he very rarely did, exaggerated the whole meaning, not She figures by which he was making his meaning clear. The boys of the young generation, for example, seldom do things quite so mannish as the acts Leec h loved to ascribe to them, and there was therefore exaggeration in the idea of all that series of pictures, but the boys themselves were not exaggerated. On the contrary, the very Essence of the fun was the lifelike rendering of lad s who were doing things which lads according to popular judgment ought to leave to men, or which only men could do. Cruikshank would have made the boys' figures express the pom posity, precocity, or affectation which Leech con veyed through the design and the written scroll. In many of his pictures, perhaps the majority, the whole force consists in the realistic rendering of a comic incident, and the spirit of caricature is not only absent, but it would if present entirely destroy the effect. Nothing more laugh able, for example, can be conceived than a sketch now before us, " An Advertising Medium,' or animated sandwich, re gularly enclosed in placards, standing in the Strand while a wicked little street Arab, his face as full of fun, and mis chief, and rascality as if Murillo had painted him, tickles the unfortunate's nose with a long straw, but a touch of caricature in any of the figures would simply have spoilt the design, In another, which ma all London laugh, the joke is not in the picture at all, which shows simply two street lads pointing at one of those dressed-up errand boys whom pretentious people call pages, but in the letter-press, " I say Jim, here's Bill been and got the influeeze, and broke out all over buttons." Very often Mr Leech threw aside comedy altogether, and reli.ed f VGLUIIt. UI pLuLLy gwo in the attitudes in which they at e most commonly seen, but which painters of Academy pictures studiously avoid, and which so to speak excite the memory to a slain No man indeed illustrated more strongly the difference between the tendency of the ultimate tendencies of caricature and of pictorial humour. The tendency of the former is towards the grotesque, ending in fantastic but weird dreams like the "Dance of Death ;" of the latter towards the common place, ending in sketches like the vapidities published in _London &clay, and it was into this that Leech was always in danger of fallirg. That he did not fall was owing partly to his admirable skill as a draughtsman, partly to a rich store of native humour, of true genial fun, such as only Englishmen and Italians fully appreciate, partly to some very keen antipathies—witness the series of " Flunkeiana and all sketches of foreigners—and partly to an unusually wide experience. A man who is London littcroteur, artist, tourist, and sportsman all at once has scope for the exercise of what faculty of obser vation nature may have have bestowed on him, and nature had given Leech a considerable one. Into the respective merits of the two kinds of power it is not now necessary to enter. Caricature as an art has almost ceased to be prac tised in England, and the rising generation scarcely under' stand the estimation in which the few professors like Cruik shank left among us were once held by their countrymen. Here and there a few thinkers are left who regret the deca dence of a great art, who will tell you, and tell 3ou truly, that the caricaturist is as much greater than the humorist as the poet is greater than the special correspondent, that the one creates and the other only copies, that one requires imagination and gives scope to genius, the other needs only a skilful hand and eye, and leaves room only. for a faculty of power which is to genius what shrewdness is to intelleo lectual power, but the public voice is against them. The taste of the day is for realism in this as in all other branches of art, and as the taste is not unsound but only narrow, there is neither object nor use in contending too vehemently against it. The success of Mr Leech—a very real success, or half England would not have read the announcement of his death with a sense of personal loss—was due to the readi ness with which he perceived the change, and seized on the new path it opened to artists like himself, gifted with a per ception almost amounting to genius, real skill in design, and facility in very rapid execution. Wo question if Mr Leech, had Punch not existed, would have gained a great place in art, but Punch unquestionably owes to Mr Leech a debt no amount of money would ever repay. In his own walk, the representation of common incidents from the humorous point of view, he was almost matchless. Whether the subject were Mr Briggs hugging his first salmon out of the water, or two Frenchman discussing English voracity, or Ed win slightly bored by Augelina's exzgeamce, or the street Arab quizzing the street sente y, or the foot man giving in his "resignation," or the nouveau riche giving a party with greengrocers for servants, no one could give to the realistic rendering of the simplest accidents so exquisite; a flavour of absurdity. There is nothing that we know of particularly absurd in fly-fishing in the rain, or a footman dropping a plate over an exquisite's whiskers, or an angry old gentleman rating a conductor. or a child bathing in water too cold for him—but only look at Leech's sketches of the victims of those occurrences. You can see the oath in the old gentleman's mouth, the groan of the exquisite, and the shudder of the child, and gain an idea somehow of a slight unreasonableness in all three. The joke was never over the head of the public for whom it was intended, yet never coarse, and never tainted by malice. Leech was with his pencil thoroughly good. humoured, except when depicting foreigners, whom he de tested and always represents in some grotesquely ridiculous light. In other cases his antipathies, which extended to whole classes such as footmen, the unrefined wealthy, cabmen, and old maids, merely gave his work a slight flavour of sarcasm, which it occasionally required to keep it from insipidity. He represented. on paper precisely the view Punch's good-humoured John Bull sometimes takes, and always wishes to take, of the incidents around him, and the spec tator was pleased by finding his own pleasantest th oug hts realised before him. If no laugh was to be had hi s p re tty girls were an unfailing resource, and were, on the whole, more popular than the comic sketches. We aro not at tempting to estimate Mr Leech's rank as an artist, but if any ore wishes to compare him with other humorous draughtsmen let him study the girls in Punch, and in any of its rivals, Mr Leech could draw girls who were pretty, and ladylike, yet belonged to the middl e c l ass , an d were pursuing ordinary, or it might be undignified, occupations —a feat in which at least five-sixths of our comic artists fail. The truth seems to have been that, unlike most men who think much of the ludicrous side of life, Mr Leech not only understood refinement but sympathised with it, and could therefore give it expression almost at will— in artLans, f .r example, 48 fully as in the Guardsmen he was fond of " taking down." It is a striking but not altogether melan- ' choly fact to record that a man gifted in such a way and to such a degree should have died at 47, a victim to overwork. That seems to have been the truth. His morbid hatred of organ-grinders, and indeed of all causes of noise, was merely a symptom of the nervous irritability produced by confirm , ous and exhausting labour. To say, as has been said every where, that he was killed by organ-grinders is absurd. He was killed by the cause which kills half the literary men in London, and everywhere else except Germany, a continuous strain upon the mental powers producing in him nervous sensitiveness and ultimately disease of the heart, as it pro duces in others paralysis and in a few the habit of intoxica tion. There is no cure for that disease excepting idleness, and we do not know why writer or artist should be blamed for not skulking work any more than the soldier is blamed for not skulking the bullets. It is only for us that it is im moral to die rather than put off harness ? Among reflecting men the manner of Mr Leech's death will increase their sense of the vacancy caused by the fact, for it proves that he laboured in his vocation with loving zeal, that his genial drawings were no result of accidental facility, but of that absorption, that energetic, persistent struggle to do the very bast circumstances will admit that separates the true artist from the man gifted with powers which will never yield to the world the result those powers were given him to pro duce. Mr Leech's death, like his best work in life, was a protest against pretension. THE READER.—John Leech, one of the greatest o English artists, one of the bravest and tenderest of English gentlemen, died in his prime on Saturday evening. The announcement of his death shocked us as when we learn of some great calamity. To his friends his loos is, indeed, irreparable; but it will also be felt through the length and breadth of the land. All will comprehend that a great light has been quenched. A pure as well as a great light, set up on high to show us what sort of men and women we are in the nineteenth century, his place may be occupied, but it is too great to be filled by any of his living contem poraries. Like his schoolfellow Thackeray, he has met his death in the plentitude of his powers, while engaged in producing his most carefully considered works with what appeared to be extraordinary fertility of invention and ease. Yet we know that he had been ailing for some time, that his system had become sub ject to a nervous irritability which deprived him of rest and induced a peculiar susceptibility to noise. He has often been heard to complain bitterly of the pain to which he was subjected by the presence of street-organs in his neighbour hood ; and he had his revenge, though not his remedy, in the drawings by which he illustrated this form of street nuisance in the pages of Punch. The torments he endured from the grinding of these instruments were beyond his powers of endurance; and to these and the never-ceasing monotonous hammering of some small mechanic in his neighbourhood, acting upon an overwrought brain, his death is attributed. If an artist is to be measured by the ideas he is able to express without reference to the materials with which he works, it would be difficult to assign limits to the claims of John Leech to public recogni tion ; but, if there are clearly-defined limits in which his position may be fixed as an artist, let us remember that he was a great teacher, as sensitive as he was humorous, open to all genial and healthy influences, always steering clear of sentimentality, on the one hand, and coarseness on the other. He epitomised the life of his generation, seizing with the true instinct of genius the types of the various classes of which the community is composed. Nor was his intuition ever at fault in the representations of any part of the subject he selected for his sketch. He was Hogarthian in the truth and meaning with which all the salient points of the scene he represented were touched ; he was equally at home in the hunting-field or at the seaside, in a lady's boudoir or a costermonger's club, in the park or on a cab-rank, in the kitchen or in the nursery; and the atmosphere, as it were, of each was expressed by a few mysterious touches whichf'give the sense of dulness or of brightness, of summer breezes or of autumnal glooming. Of his humour it is almost unnecessary to speak, because it is just that part of his nature which was widely, almcst universally, appreciated. But, although he was one of the greatest humorists of this or of any age, his faculty was always restrained, so to speak, by the presence of a genial sympathy. He struck at all our follies, vices, affectations, and conceits —but with no cynical arm, and in no misanthropical spirit. He held the " mirror up to nature ;" and in it we might see ourselves reflected, and take the truth to our hearts that there were classes and conditions of ..life; in , this society of ours, besides our own supreme individualities and cliques, the existence of which may serve to teach a lesson as well as to provoke a laugh ; and that such reflections can be sug gested by sketches in which the lessen is veiled behind the fun is the sign of a power of which, as far as we know. Hogarth is, in another mantra . , the only previous example. How John Leech passed from the rank of a caricaturist into that of an artist may best be seen by a reference to the back numbers of Punch. The pages of this periodical con tain the chief records of his artistic life ; and his death will prove, it is to be feared, an irreparable loss to those with whom he had been so long associated. The sketches which he produced twenty years ago bear witness to the inborn faculty—the native humour which found its vent in a prof,esion for the exercise of which he had never been qualified by education, yet in which, with a rare in stinct, he at once cultivated and restrained his powers, to the end that ho might attain the greatest pod Bible results within the restricted bounds which the limited materials at his command imposed. In all his earlier sketches the humour is paramount, and it is expressed by means of that exaggeration of drawing and character which distinguish the mere caricaturist; but with this positi' n, a native-born artist like John Leech could never rest con tent; and we find that he gradually but surely advanced ta higher leve . eVer na o• roorsain and nays, no .4 ie mire ot Lath—his lamented death at the early age of forty-seven, in the full brightness of his powers, cut down, as it were, like a tree full of sap, and bearing fruit a hundredfold. We may easily count the living attists who may fairly be said to take a higher position than John Leech. Seen in one aspect, he takes pre • eminence of all, for he has rescued his generation from oblivion, A collection of his works will be for our childon's children a record of our customs, our habits, our fashions, our social relations, and even our figure of speech. We shall speak again through him to those who shalt come after no ; and, in this view, his versatility and the multitude of his productions leave little room for the regret that has sometimes been expressed that such rare faculties should not have found a worthier medium of ex pression than rough woodcuts in the pages of Punch. It is as an artist, even more than as a humorist, that John Leech is rightly appreciated among his brethren, and it would be well that the public at large should understand fully the greatness of the loss that we deplore. The difference be tween his drawings and those of his imitators is one of kind and net only one of degree. He did not merely reproduce a street incident selec'ed for the illustration of a bit of popular slang, or a hunting-field in order to depict the scrapes of a Mr Briggs, or a Scotch salmon river or hill side on purpose to set forth in a ridiculous light the accidents to which sporting tourists are liable ; such incidents he took, indeed, for his subjects, and deli neated them with wonderful truth and inexhaustible humour ; but they are also set forth with a graphic power that places the author in the first rank among the artists of his time. There is now no one left among us who can re present not merely the incidents and humour of a hunting field, but who can, as it were, carry us into the field with him—make us partakers in the excitement of the sport and sensitive to the very atmosphere of the scene ; there is no one left who can set before us the real aspect of an Eng , lish or Continental watering-place so that wo instinctively recognise its truthfulness, and this not merely in one or two particulars, but as a whole—the bright sunlight, the move ment of the sea, the scudding clouds, being all suggested by a few scratches which he knew how to make infi nitely suggestive, The images of the persons and of the things he represented were photographed on his brain, and his drawings were representations of real living people en gaged in the pursuit of business or pleasure, and not of a mere collection of models brought together to act parts according to the common recipe of picture-making. In his keen observation, which nothing escaped, and in the power of retaining and tutting the fruits of it to account, lay the secret of his influence and his success. His active brain seems latterly to have acted upon his nerves, and he was unable to sleep or rest ; and, though he had been ailing for some time, he died unexpectedly and suddenly at his own house on Saturday evening about 7 o'clock. He has re joined his old friend and schoolfellow Thackeray, and we are left to mourn his less, and to recall the shadow of the grave, gentle face and dignified presence that have vanished from amongst us like a dream. THE EXAMINER.—After four-and-twenty years of ser vice to the public, John Leech is now resting from his labour. Death only could take the pencil from his busy hand. There had been no pause in the genial eterrent of his wit. His health had failed, he had been to see his doc tor on the previous day, but last Saturday evening there was a children's party in his house, and he died then with the voices of the children in his ears. Upon them, and upon all that is good and graceful and belongs to the true cheerfulness of life, he had laid a loving touch in all his work, lie found his place in the world early, went straight to it, and held by it firmly to the last. He was not to be teml ted into a second seat at what was thought a higher table of the oil painters. Among thew, however good his work, he could have had little influence on the main body of his coun trymen. Knowing thevalue and use of his skill as a caricatu rist of the follies of the day he waged a wholesome war against that which Fielding at the outset of his own career dee dared to be the only fit subject of ridicule, affectation; provoking laughter against all forms, whether in child or man, of the endeavour to appear what one is not. But always it was a kindly laughter of good fellowship, telling many a truth whimsically and wisely in few strokes of simple outline, through which ho seemed to express cha racter, and criticise it too, in every light turn of the hand that answered with so wonderful an aptitude to each directing movement of his wit. He drew, indeed, vin dictively when he attacked the organ grinders by whom his sensitive brain was tortured, and by whom he was driven out of a comfortable house in Brunswick-square to th e doubtful quiet of Kensington. How much distress he suffered from their discordant grinding noise was told, only too truly we now feel, in Mr Mark Lemon's letter addressed to Mr Bass, when he was about to bring into Parliament his bill for the regulation of street music (already published ill The !Fun). ~../_~ It is over now. Torment of discord jars no more lIP°Z mind that was but a few days since delighting 115 fine harmonies of mirth whereby John Le6ch has We ll place of his own in the history of art. lie it Was Wh o ° dissevered caricature from the harsh spirit of scurllf a from the grotesque of ugliness, and as a friendly Cenil t our follies blended his laughter with a keen sense °.l beauty of the sea or sky, of the graces of life , the rill) comforts of an English home, the heartiness o f a One / Ja i fellowship. As he was in his pictures so was he iall°A kindly shrewd, manly in all his tastes, but with the de ment of the purest artist nature, and a refine ment ye°°, and more sacred than that in its source , giv in g a ebb all his intercourse with others. The oldest and the yob oould share with his comrades frank and never failingi in him, for with all that he found kindly he had 0Y thies, with all he was alike unaffected and sincere. Recent Wills and Bequests. (From the illustrated London News.) j l The will of Admiral the Right Hon. George, ° l ` Pie dogan, C. 8., of Stanton Downham, Suffolk, and 131 t ' A i dilly, was proved in her Majesty's Court o f Probate ""0 19th ult., by the Hon. Frederick William Cadogarl, th and Lady Augusta Cadogan and Lady lionorie Cadogan, the daughters. The personalty was swan £35,000. His lordship executed his will in 1861, 10 °4 a codicil in 1862, and died on the 17 th Sep tember the age of 81. After leaving some tokens of reresa l „ to his sons and daughters, his lordship disposes of ill perty in trust for his two daughters for their lives, al l their decease to be transferred to his son Frederielg lutely. To Mrs Hill, the confidential serv ant of Frederica Countess, is left a legacy of £l,OOO, together with ship's gold watch. Liberal legacies are also 1 0 f o o . s teward and valet, an annuity of £ 2O to his u pp er servant, and one year's wages to his other servants, legacies to be paid free of legacy duty. The will of Sir H, L. Yea, of Taunton St. MarY 3 : 1( len, Somerset, was proved in the London Court by Fry, Esq., Taunton, the sole executor. Sir Henry recently succeeded to the title on the death of his the late baronet. Sir Henry executed his will on last, the week preceding his death, and died at the q e j H© has bequeathed to his nephew, the Rev. E. IL 0 71 t M,A., his Bruton Turnpike Bonds. To his godchildt Fry (the son of,his executor), he leaves S;100 ; and tlivo a few other legacies to the executor's children b 1 j i vents. The residue, real and personal, he leaves to cater "in testimony and grateful acknowledgm en t great care and attention he has uniformly paid an' ,t to him during the many years he had lived with 1 1 10 The will of Mr F. Robson, described therein 11 , 0 Frederick Brownhill, more commonly know n as x '4O Thomas Robson, comedian," 19, A m pthill-squaret stead-road, was proved in the London Cou rt, on l' October, by the executors, Charles Brookes, Mount-street, Lambeth, surgeon, and WM. Sne ll, fl Clement's Inn, Strand. The personalty was swortlio £6,000. The will was brought into court by l• 1 0 Esq., solicitor, of New Inn , Stran d. The si g nature ) —Thomas Frederick Brownhill—appears to be trell l written. The attesting witnesses are H. C.Andrevl6 I Oakley-square, and T. Dignam, solicitor, The will is dated May 18,1863, and he died on the August last, in his 43d year. He bequeaths all 131 : 0 1 ture, the lease of his house, Ampthillesquar s, estate and interest in the Olympic Theatre, and 4 ) i nves tments, in trust ;for his wife and two l'oo bequeathing to his wife, Rosetta Frances, an 1113 , 1 ,1 legacy of £lOO, and an interest to be derived from perty during her life or widowhood, and after equally divided between their son and daughter); and Frances Brownhill. COUNTRY MARKETS. GRANTHAM—SATURDAY. Old white wheat, 428 to 458; red, 39s to kr") new white, 40s to 44s ; red, 38s to 40s. 31s to 35s per qr ; grinding, 26s to 28s ; oats, 09 275; new, 22s to 245; beans, 418 to 438; peas, 348 NOTTINGHAM—SATURDAY. flat , P i White wheat, from 42s to 50s ; red wheat, „a,ou Ba r ley—malting, 29s to 35s ; grinding, 27s to nar old, at 25s to 38s Od; new, L 228 to 255. Beane to 44s per qr. ; new, —s to —s. 00 or Flour, fine, 28s to 308; super, 32s to 37s per NORWICH—SATURDAY. We had a tolerable supply of wheat on offer fro i g J o' this morning, and a fair trade doing, the P e i oFi week being fully supported. There was a libel pd barley, and the demand was moderate , at Eb°ll rates. Oats and other articles dull. ;70 White wheat., 44s to 45s 1 Red wheat .... Malting barley 3ls to 3?s 1 Chevalier barley".R„ Distilling do. 27s to 28s I Oats.. ......... Flour, 26s Od to 28s Od per sack from the YORK—SATURDAY. Br o it To-day there was a tolerableshow of wheat, rWer, )it A,,-1 demand, at late rates. Barley also at late ,k 0 better demand. it tr y Wheat, red 38s t 0406 Oate...• ••••I'l ./3 •,•-° ti, White do .40e to 446 Beans 0 , Barley .27s to 32e Peas 0 .. 0 00 Malt, 58s to 60s per qr. ; rye, 30s per qr ; to 32s per sack. LEICESTER—SATURDA.V• 00 Old white wheat, 40s to 42s • red 33 s to I' 9 l stone. New white, 40s to 42s per ' 36 stOne, lait'9(;! new, 30s to 33s per qr.; grinding, 28s to stone.3oe . Los L. Los , L;Ly 1,13 LOD per LI 0 old, ',jBs to 42s per 3S stone ; flour, 31s to 395 per CORK—FRIDAY. The following were the quotations this niolll if;1111 wheat, 7s 6d to Ss 33; white, 8s Od to 9s Odor, 60 61 to 7s ud ; oats, 5s 8d to Gs 10 d ; black - 65 61; here, —s Od. DUBLIN—FB,IDAY. S. d. s. d. 1 Wheat, white 24 0 to 26 6 Do., red 2l 6 to 24 0 Do., new Barley Oats Do., black — 0 to,— 0 Oatmeal ......io to 0 0 d Beans.. ..... 0 0 , Bere ......... 0 1 Rapeseed .. • • 1 4 0 1 Bakers' flour •• 0 Indian corn .. Foreign Mail Packet List. MAILS DUE. Australia and Mauritius, via Southampton.... , ':14 ( via Marseilles ....... * . ril Brazil and Cape Verds, by British packet. ...... .0 Cape of Good Hope, Ascension, and St. Helens* I• 11 China, Penang, and Singapore, via Southataptevisi via Marseilles • •• Falkland Islands Gibraltar, via Southampton .... ' India (Calcutta), and Ceylon, via Southamptoll•': --via Marseilles..' India (Bombay), via Southampton ........ '• via Marseilles ............... $1 'l 4( Portugal.... .............................. Malta, Egypt, and Aden, via Southampton ..... via Mandllea ...... Newfoundland "If , Oporto and Vigo .. . ............ ' U. S. and British N. America, by Brit. packet.. • by U.S. pac ket ..4'l o by Canadian pael°).4o All parts of West Indies, including Chili, l'ertif ' California. and British Columbia. ........... a j , [ADVERTISEMENT.]—HoIIoway's Ointmento o Redemption from Disease.—The hidden caused pected source of many a wasting sickness, 1113 0 01 1 strength has been developed by these admirebleo the application of the ointment to the raaladiniled covered has rescued many valuable lives from torture and premature end. Piles in all the n i to e/ under which they aflict mankind, fistulas, 04°104 flammations, ulcerations, internal, external, 00 chronic, are thus safely and speedily brought cup ease, and thence conducted to a lasting, per:eq C". 7 ointment and pills are innocent in comp healing, purifying, and comforting. Both er ° o o 4 operation, and assist each other—ever helpi n g harming nature's acknowledged laws. 08410 so Births. jv GIBSONE.—On the Ist inst., at Leicester, the Wife opi John Gibsone, late 17th Lancers, of a son. o f KING.—On the 4t,h inst., at Highgate, the Wi f° T. King, Esq., of a son, LISTER.—On the Ist inst,, at Leytonstoney Arthur of a son. MORGA.N.—On Lister, the 4th inst., at 2, Park-villas! .>1341 0( wile of Charles Morgan, Esq., of the India v son. Marriages. Eit 1; BOWTELL —RICHMOND.—On the 29th ult., o .o oi Strattord-le-Bow, Mr. Albert Eowtell, of p road, Hackney, to Lydia, daughter of gr. ` T I d ill of Victoria-park. , A I i tti ;l A ° HOLIWYD—DAGNALL.-0a the 3d inst ~ Ja s,-t „p o i Wandsworth, George Baron, second son of al tr; E-q., of Byfloot, to Charlotte Boulford, Wegrore). of Charles Dagnall, Esq , of Wandswort l4 '''' Deaths. n o 6 4: GOODWIN.—On the 31st ult., Henry Wr" - ea t Esq., of 1, Sunderland-place, Westbourn e ' r water, and of the Stock Exchange, aged 41 ' iv i r .r HALL,—On the Ist inst.., at 9, London-stree t, '" di Hall, of Fe egad 71. 1,000" JACKSON. —On the 2,1 inst , ncburch-street, a t S o uthfields, --- i Jackson, Esq., aged 74.. oor lib A LAKE,-0a the 3d inst., at King's Langich B spY Lake, Esq., aged 47. fteP OwErr,--On the 3d inst at Highbury, the - ~ Owen, aged 60. lO PINHORN.—On the 31st ult ,at Islington, ~ 9 co , Esq., R., aged 70. ,a, WA.DE.—On • the 2d inst., at 186, Albaur r° well, Wm, Wade, E,4q., aged 74 07, A fiA' London: Printed and Pvt.wiislied by WILLf- 01 00 0 , 6 0 of No. 112, Strand, Printer, at ritiE SU S 00 v" . Strand, in the Precinct of the Savoy , Alitittleeez,—Mondiy, November 7, 1864"